HAUNTS AND HABITS JORNIA faulty calculation may lead to a sousing. I have seen a companion land flat on his back-the further bank gave way as his feet touched it—in a dyke containing about two feet of water and a bottom of the blackest of black mud. On regaining firm land he presented a picture never to be forgotten: nor was the rage he was in ever to be forgotten either. Poor fellow! he was scouting during the late war and had four bullets put simultaneously through his head. by ambushed Boers. When shooting over country where the dykes are wide it should be made a practice for the gunner to hand his gun to his companion, then to jump the dyke, and then to catch the guns as they are thrown from the other side. A gun is best thrown by holding it about half way up the barrel with the left hand and placing the fingers of the right hand under the heel. It should be caught with one hand by the barrel, six or eight inches from the breech. Throwing and catching a gun, unloaded of course, constitute a most safe and simple operation. If you you take anything but quite easy jumps with a gun in your hand, sooner or later either you will be certain to suffer at the expense of saving your gun, or your gun will suffer at the expense of saving yourself. I have known a man carrying a jumping pole as a regular ம்2 SHOOTING THE SNIPE adjunct to the snipe-shooter's equipment. With the aid of a pole, jumping of course becomes comparatively easy, and far less telling. Anything in the way of a cartridge-bag or a game-bag is an abomination when snipe shooting, unless one should be merely pottering round. On bad ground, a bag, its pull shifted by a sudden jerk, will upset one's balance sooner than anything, and is always more or less an encumbrance; when jumping has to be done, it is worse than an abomination. If you study comfort and utility, don a shooting coat of the good old shape with game pockets in the good old place. Wear a long cartridge waistcoat, or-it has drawbacks which a waistcoat has not- -a cartridge belt, and stow away in odd pockets what extra cartridges you think will be needed. Short cartridges are a convenience if your gun will shoot with them quite as well as with long ones. If otherwise, they are undesirable, decreased bulk in no way compensating for a poor pattern. Wherever in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales there exist conditions suited to the bird's tastes, there from time to time will snipe appear in greater or less numbers. These conditions, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, are: soft soil containing an abundant supply of worms, and water near at hand wherein the birds may frequently cleanse their bills from the drying mud or earth with which they quickly become incrusted. What care the snipe takes of that long bill of his ! how scrupulously clean he keeps it ! The question of dogs in connection with snipeshooting is an important one. A dog which retrieves really well both from land and water is to be considered indispensable to the gunner who walks after snipe. Failing the companionship of such a dog, one must labour under considerable and continuous difficulties, and lose many and many a bird in spite of all endeavours. Not only do snipe repeatedly fall in the most inaccessible places, but, on account of their small size and the tints of their plumage, it is often a difficult task or an impossible one to find them if they fall on anything save quite bare ground. If a bird falls in watery sedge or rush, it is almost certainly lost for good and all unless one has the services of a retriever at command. More than ever is a dog indispensable when soft snow lies upon the ground, especially snow that is thawing and sinking away from the upstanding herbage. A snipe falling into soft snow is often completely lost to sight, not a sign disclosing the spot where it fell and unless it has been marked down with : absolute exactitude, it is more than likely never to be gathered without canine assistance. Writing on snipe-shooting without a dog, there occurs to me one of the strangest shooting incidents of which I have ever heard, an incident having the merit of being strictly true. The time of its happening was many years ago; the actors were near relatives of my own. A and his son B, minus a dog, were returning home after an afternoon ramble with the gun. While walking along the bank of a tidal part of the Norfolk Ouse, four or five miles above Lynn, B shot a snipe which fell, apparently dead, on the river mud, nearly knee deep at that particular point. The bird not being considered worth the inconvenience which retrieving it from its muddy resting place would have entailed, A and B continued their homeward way. without it. Between the spot where the bird was left on the mud and the house in which A and B lived at the time, there lies about a third of a mile of park. When A and B had crossed the park and reached their house, they found A's wife and daughter standing on the drive examining a dead snipe. A few ininutes before, they, A's wife and daughter, had heard a fluttering among the branches of a weeping birch which overhung the drive, and a moment afterwards a wounded snipe fell at their feet. The bird, which died as soon as it was taken from the ground, had its breast and the under part of its wings coated with mud, unmistakably mud from the river. The question was, could this possibly be the bird that had been left for dead on the river mud? B immediately returned to the spot where the supposed dead bird had been left-and found it gone. The snipe which fluttered down through the branches of the weeping birch was, beyond doubt, the same bird that had been left for dead; it had risen again and overtaken A and B, and had reached the house before they reached it, falling not a dozen yards from the front door. Many, if not most, Irish sportsmen make a practice of shooting snipe over dogs. When one is shooting bog or undrained marsh, a setter is invaluable, especially when one finds the birds none too abundant— and he who owns a dog which will quarter freely, stand steadily and retrieve the birds when shot, is well equipped indeed. In the case of ordinary snipe shooting in England, however, when one simply walks the drained marsh, a setter is worse than useless. Your spaniel or retriever will, or should, tell you of any very close-lying bird in a dyke which may be inclined to squat while you pass it. It may be said that if you train a setter to retrieve snipe, the |